Storm
by ceridwen-amyed
Summary: “The heart wishes to die...but the body desires nothing more but to live.” In which Christian craves darkness and life.


_Storm_

**Disclaimer:** Characters and places are not mine, blah blah, belong to Baz, blah blah.

**Author's Note:** This is pretty dark (maybe very… I'm not too good at measuring darkness) and slashy. So if you're not in to that kind of thing, look away… now.

Christian rested his forehead against the frame of his window, feeling the splintered wood against his fevered skin. The sky was murky, almost brown, the almost agonising weight of a storm bearing down on the city. Plants wilted, tempers flew, animals grew restless. Christian tried not to move, tried not to grind his teeth. Stillness. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead and he brushed them away – not impatiently. Slowly and deliberately as if he were afraid of making sudden moves.

Outside in the street a stray dog howled, and Christian suppressed the desire to do the same. His heart was beating too fast and his muscles tensed spasmodically. He tried to think of cold things, snow and ice and his father's blue eyes. Nothing worked. The heat remained.

_Why do I still feel like this? Shouldn't this have finished now?_

He'd got like this before, with her. He'd catch her eye and up would quirk one of those slim eyebrows and she'd claim that she didn't like the dialogue, or wanted to work on her delivery with him. Off they would walk, cool as the ocean breeze, hands held limply by their sides, heads down – no one could suspect what they truly meant to each other.

The door to her dressing room would shut and his hands would immediately be in her hair, coiling tightly and holding her there. She sometimes slammed him against the wall – not deliberately. He could never quite keep his balance around her. They kissed roughly, almost awkwardly because this emotion could not be contained and tried to burst free too soon. He could not decide where to kiss her, where to hold her.

There was the worry – _will someone see us_? And even that felt like a sudden thrill to Christian, something that he could not understand. In all the stories he had ever read, all the songs he'd heard, not one of them had talked of this insatiable desire. He'd imagined love to be pretty kisses, walks in the park, tea and poetry, lunch in the garden. He had not imagined kisses that bruised and an ache in his stomach when she smoothed out the creases in her dress, patted her hair and returned to the Duke.

He felt too much for her; enough to fill a lifetime. And now that she was gone (he still could not think that word: _dead._ It was wrong on his tongue.), the feeling lingered. Perhaps it was something she had inspired within him, something she had taught him. Christian remembered her lying in his arms and her heart always beat so fast, so hard as though it would leap out and rise into the blue sky. 

That was how he felt now. The pain of her death, the grief of losing her had not faded, but now this… _rawness_ was back and there was nothing to release him from it. She was no longer here. At first he had felt no desire to live or die… He felt nothing but loss. Writing their story had done this, he decided, by making him recall the way she had danced around his garret, making the place ring with her voice and laughter. Now it was silent, and he desired… release.

Abruptly, Christian stood and ran from the room. Perhaps he could somehow burn away the feeling, stop this maddening rush of blood in his veins. There was a bar on the corner of the street, a place where he and the other bohemians had often sought refuge. Christian stumbled into it, hoping that the scent of the other patrons' smoke and the rough taste of alcohol would satisfy him. 

He nearly ordered Absinthe out of habit but changed his mind at the last minute, realising that strangely, he did not want to be drunk. He wanted to merely _get_ drunk, to lurk at that strange twilight between drunkenness and sobriety when everything in the world is at once beautiful and grotesque.

"Whisky," he said, remembering his father drinking out of glass tumblers, pouring the dark liquid down his neck and reprimanding Christian for going to Paris and wasting away amongst the drunks and opium addicts.

"Christian." A slurred voice hailed him from a dark corner, and turning, Christian saw the bohemians. His friends. All stared at him as if he were a ghost. Christian supposed that he probably looked like one – pale and dead inside. Satie stood and held out his hand to Christian's.

"It's good to see you out," he said in his quiet, serious voice. Christian said nothing in reply, staring at their faces instead 

So this was the remains of that great dream. After Toulouse had quietly packed his bags and headed back to the family chateau, and without the spirit of the Moulin to drive them, here they were. Stuck in a bar, a book of poetry open on the table, both splattered with absinthe. Christian remembered his first night at the Moulin Rouge, remembered how wild and exotic everyone had seemed to him – even Nini, whose rough voice sometimes put him in mind of grandmother, who smoked too much and was something of a disgrace. Her eyes were hollow now. All their eyes were – the sparkle of revolution had left them all. Except for him.

The Argentinean sat next to Nini, one arm coiled over her chair, the other resting on the table and a cigar balanced between his fingers. He seemed to quiver, as if every muscle were trembling in this inertia that had swept over them all. Christian met the Argentinean's eyes and found himself drawn in by the darkness there. He sat down and swallowed his drink in one gulp, aware that the weight of the tables gaze had fallen onto him.

There was an awkward silence. Christian wondered if his arrival had caused it or whether it had always been there just beneath the surface. The Doctor poured more drinks from a bottle of absinthe he'd been hiding somewhere. Christian kept his glass in his hand. He felt tired of hiding from reality, tired of watching the Green Fairy dance. He wanted something like whisky that tasted earthy and reminded him of his father. Cold, hard reality.

He glanced again at the Argentinean, who refused the Doctor's offer of a drink too. There it was again; that lurking darkness in his eyes. Christian remembered how the other man had prowled around the Moulin, seeking out the girls who wanted or needed to dance with him. He remembered the night Satine had gone to the Duke, remembered the tango. He licked his lips.

Silently, the rest of the group raised their glasses and poured the liquid down their throats. There was no sense of happiness or enjoyment about it. They reminded Christian of school children taking their bitter-tasting medicine because they knew there would be hell to pay from mother if they didn't. They're not real people at all, he thought, gazing into the blank faces all around him. They're masks and caricatures; broken puppets. Without the stage at the Moulin they're nothing. They've forgotten how to live.

They deserve death.

Was that cruel? Perhaps. They had never done anything wrong, these poor savages, but they had lived so vibrantly, so excitingly for a few years. It was as if they had used up the bright spark of life and were now left with nothing but ash. 

But ash can still burn; Christian could literally feel the Argentinean's eyes upon him. He looked up and stared back. There it was: life. Barely contained within those deep black eyes was an intense emotion, so dark and thick that it made Christian suddenly feel sluggish, and a chill ran down his spine. Only one other person had ever looked at him like that, and even Satine's eyes had never blazed. Perhaps because she had never really been angry with him, and Christian knew that for one night at least the Argentinean had hated him. Blind, rash hatred at Christian and his unfettered emotions that had ruined the chances of the play… 

Christian stared back into those black eyes, darker than ebony, relishing the feeling behind them. It was so potent, he could almost taste it on his tongue, a bitter tang that whispered of life and release.

Abruptly, the Argentinean stood. Only Christian seemed startled by his sudden movement. The Argentinean whispered something in Nini's ear – she barely seemed to notice – and then left the bar, dropping his cigar on the floor and stubbing it out with his foot. His eyes did not leave Christian's face.

Christian watched him leave and then turned back to the table. His cheeks were flushed and his heart – god, he felt as if his heart might burst. His fists clenched and unclenched underneath the table.

_God, Satine… Why did you do this to me?_

But she hadn't done this to him; Christian fancied that it had been there all along. Darkness within him, raw feeling that could not allow him to learn his father's business and marry a pretty little creature and settle down. It created inspiration within him and restlessness. It was this feeling that drove him out of England and its stuffy conservatism, and now it drove him out of the dead bar and into the sultry night. 

The air wrapped itself around Christian like a blanket and already he was panting. To his left he heard the splutter and sudden flare of a match being lit. The Argentinean lit a new cigar, sucking in the thick heady smoke, and dropped the match on the floor. His body leant against the bar window, the warm light from inside casting a glow on his skin. He was still, but Christian could see that he was shivering ever so slightly.  Every movement was so carefully controlled that the faint tremor in his hands passed almost unnoticed. Had Christian not been so hypersensitive he probably would not have noticed.

"Do you miss her?" The Argentinean's voice was low, harsh like gravel, grating over Christian's ears.

"Of course I do," said Christian. He took a step closer.

"Amigo. You do not look like a man pining for his dead lover." 

Christian trembled and the air around them seemed so thick that it seemed almost liquid, like anger. Like love. He could not think what to say. He stepped forward.

The tiny part of him that still clung to his respectability as an English gentlemen squealed _what will your mother think?_

I don't care, he thought fiercely, I don't care that this is stupid and wrong and irrational. I need this.

"I still need her," he said out loud. Another step closer.

"Ah, yes," said the Argentinean, taking the cigar out of his mouth and staring at it intently. "The heart always desires what it can no longer have." He looked up at Christian. "The heart wishes to die," he said softly, "but the body desires nothing more but to live." He took another drag on the cigar. Christian stared fiercely at the tip of it as it burned, tiny pieces of ash fluttering into the night air. With a faint smirk, the Argentinean stood up straight and walked away from Christian. He paused and with the barest glance back at the writer, he turned down an alleyway.

Christian hesitated – _your poor mother! What will she think?_ moaned the voice of an English gentleman – and saw in his mind's eye Satine. Beautiful Satine, so full of vitality… Now in her grave.

In only a few steps, Christian was at the alley's entrance. He caught the Argentinean's arm and wrenched him around, pressing his lips hard against the Argentinean's. Dimly, at the back of his mind, the part of Christian that would always be a writer noted that the other man's breath tasted like alcohol and smoke and that his moustache was bristly and rough. Their bodies were so close that Christian could feel the heat of the Argentinean's leg pressed against him. The Argentinean's hand clasped the back of Christian's neck, the other bunching Christian's sweaty shirt up so that the small of his back was exposed to the air, cooling the skin just a little.

He could not breathe, but he could not pull away either. The two men breathed into each other's mouths.

"Those other fools," whispered the Argentinean, "they may as well be dead." Christian opened his eyes (he did not remember closing them) and stared at the other man. He could almost see the darkness within the Argentinean spilling out into the night air, surrounding them.

"You wanted this," said the Argentinean, his breath against Christian's cheek. It was not a question.

"Yes," said Christian and he shut his eyes again. "Yes, I did." His fingers entangled in the Argentinean's hair and he thought automatically _it's not long enough._ The thought didn't bother him as much as he thought it would.

It did not bother him at all.

The Argentinean was sneering slightly now. "Do you love me?" he asked and a flare of anger shot up inside of Christian. He was being mocked, mocked for the love he had once had. _Still has_ his mind argued. _The story hasn't ended yet._

"Don't be ridiculous," he said, letting his right hand drop down to the Argentinean's neck, feeling the pulse underneath his fingertips quicken. "This isn't about love." And he kissed the Argentinean, feeling the other man's moustache tickle his skin, tasting the inside of his mouth, the animal smell of sweat surrounding him.

No, this wasn't about love. For the first time in his life, Christian was doing something not for love but because of love. Because love had done this to him, brought out of his deepest soul angels and demons which could not die, even though she had. Satine had died and taken a part of him with her; but she had left him with so much more. It was a lust for life that could not be quenched, nor dampened. He did not want to extinguish it – it would have been a travesty to her memory had he done that. 

Tonight wasn't about love. It was about desire and grief and release and—

The thunder rumbled overheard, louder than ever before and Christian smelt the rain before it touched him. The Argentinean pulled away whispering something in Spanish. He tilted his head up to the rain, shutting his eyes briefly. Christian smiled bitterly and buried his head against the Argentinean's neck. He nipped the skin there, surprisingly soft between his teeth, and felt the Argentinean groan.

No, this was not about love. This was about revolution. The ending of the great Bohemian Storm that had been brewing for so many years and was now crashing down around them. Satine was dead; the Moulin Rouge a hollow shell and the revolutionaries as drunk and as bitter as the Green Fairy herself. 

As the storm broke and Bohemian Revolution washed away, Christian allowed himself to flow with it. Perhaps tomorrow he would regret this and whatever else he might do before the night ended, but he did not care. It occurred to him that he, Christian James Evans, son of a well-respected London family, had never done the right or good thing before, not by his family's standards. It seemed foolish to start tonight. He put away his worries, his memories of Satine and concentrated instead on the taste of the Argentinean's kisses.


End file.
